Modern media content providers offer streaming content, such as music, from large catalogs. Content providers generate revenue from paying users and advertisements, and pay the artists and other rights holders for the right to distribute their content.
Interaction with the music that users consume through such services is typically limited to creating, editing, and storing playlists. The songs in these playlists are usually played sequentially, with no blending of the songs or other effects (e.g., user-applied overdubs, overlays of multiple songs, transition effects, etc.).
In particular, media mixing techniques, such as blending tracks from one song to another in a playlist (e.g., crossfading), or creating remixes or other derivative works (e.g., by adding effects to songs or combining parts of different songs to create a “remix” or a “mashup”) are currently not available in streaming services. Thus, users who wish to use these techniques are forced to find alternatives to the streaming services, thus depriving the artists and other rights holders from compensation and lowering the membership of the streaming service.
Accordingly, it would be useful to improve media streaming services with technology to assist consumers in mixing and adding effects to media content, while at the same time compensating the artists and rights holders.